My cat vs. my aquarium plants / Mystery ammonia spike??

catfishgrrl · Post by **catfishgrrl** » 07 Aug 2005, 10:03

I have a 20 gallon tall that I have plants growing in. It's been running for over a year and is completely cycled and such.
I use it as a bristlnose grow-out tank.
Well, recently the ammonia spiked for no apparent reason. I even lost a few BN's. It was weird.
I did water changes (twice a day) for a few days and everything returned to normal.
I've been testing it everyday since this happened to monitor it. Then this evening the ammonia spiked again.
Well tonight I noticed that my cat was pawing around the back of the tank "playing" with some of the taller plants.
She had just came out of her litter box a little while before that. I did yet another water change and added some Ammo-lock.
I used duct tape to completely cover any place she could contaminate the water.
Could this be the source of the mysterious ammonia??

sidguppy · Post by **sidguppy** » 07 Aug 2005, 12:11

I think about the cat standing or sitting on TOP of the tank, taking a wee......

THAT would boost the ammonia, and kill your fish.

maybe put some things on top of the hood or something else to avoid the cat climbing on top of the tank?

is it an open tank?

catfishgrrl · Post by **catfishgrrl** » 08 Aug 2005, 01:58

sidguppy wrote:is it an open tank?

No it has a hood, but the back of the tank has an opening for the filter that hangs on.
She (the cat, her actual name is Anonymous, she's a black DSH) is bad for drinking the water as it comes out of the filter.

Post by **Barbie** » 08 Aug 2005, 10:21

Well duh, it's fish flavored!

I don't know that she could be tracking enough ammonia in on her feet to be stressing the fish, but it definitely won't hurt anything to make sure she can't go "fishing" again, just in case!

Barbie

catfishgrrl · Post by **catfishgrrl** » 10 Aug 2005, 12:02

I added some Bio-Spira to the tank today.
How long until I can do my regular water changes?
I usually do 25% twice a week.

bronzefry · Post by **bronzefry** » 11 Aug 2005, 14:21

Ammonia spikes can sometimes be remedied with water changes. I usually continue with regular water changes, no matter what I add to a tank(which isn't much), except medicines. Then, the water changes become more frequent. However, please don't change all of the filter media at once. This could be "cat"astrophic.

I visited a friend yesterday and his cat, which isn't usually very friendly, was all over me. I had my hands in one of the tanks prior to going to his house. My friend couldn't understand it until I showed him the photos on my laptop.

The cat was pawing the laptop at that point.

catfishgrrl · Post by **catfishgrrl** » 12 Aug 2005, 02:07

Yeah, this tank is beside the computer desk and the one cat is constantly pawing at the corys racing by.